Delegates confident after start of FIFA Cyprus talks

AN OPENING round of talks aimed at ending more than 50 years of deadlock in Cypriot football has ended with both sides confident of reaching a solution.

The two-hour meeting at the headquarters of world soccer’s governing body FIFA yesterday involved delegates from the official Cyprus FA and the non-official Cyprus Turkish FA.

The talks stopped short of considering concrete solutions to the impasse that has seen Turkish Cypriot players and clubs excluded from international competition since the founding of their breakaway association in 1955.

Instead, both sides agreed to meet again in Zurich on October 27.

“The meeting resulted as expected, because the problem of football on the island of Cyprus is a long-standing one,” Cyprus Turkish FA vice president Tahir Seroydas told Reuters.

“We knew it would not be possible to find an end solution in the first meeting but we are ready to make the necessary compromises and believe we will proceed and find a way.”
“I think we have achieved the maximum that we could today according to the circumstances,” Cyprus FA president Costakis Koutsokoumnis told Reuters.

“It is very delicate especially knowing how politicians can think and react, but these talks were purely about football and how we can help the island in football terms.

“The atmosphere was excellent, there is no doubting the will that is there on both sides and I am confident something can be done.”

The Cyprus Turkish FA’s head of external relations Cengiz Uzun told the Cyprus Mail, “Until we meet again in Zurich on October 28, we will be holding meetings in Nicosia between us and the Cyprus Football Association.”

Asked what kind of formula Turkish Cypriot footballers would be seeking, he said there was a possibility of “some kind of partnership”.

With additional reporting by Simon Bahceli

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.